Toward a theory of Papacy

I've commented on Sedevacation before. Let us constrain what that can mean. Note that I am not, here, arguing that Saint Peter's Seat is vacant nor otherwise maloccupied today.

First, we must all accept that a vacant seat is possible. The whole of AD 1315 came and went without smoke from the Conclave. If one year, why not two; why not thirty. At some point, as the saying goes, we haggle over the price.

I posit also a distinction between Papacy and Roman episcopacy. Catholics accept John XXII as the Pope following AD 1316. John was not, however, in Rome. John was in Avignon. A Roman bishop was installed during his tenure: the fifth to take the name Nicholas. This Nicholas barely lasted two years and then scampered off to Avignon. Catholics consign him to antipope status, making a point of crowning (or is it sandaling) another Nicholas in 1397, as the fifth. Well, maybe. The former one was still the Roman bishop. Come to that, the latter one reigned over a schism too.

The distinction gets more interesting where we must define "Rome". During the Third Century Crisis the Romania's capitol moved outside actual Rome, finally to settle upon Constantine's City. Thence the fifth-to-seventh-century emperors dictated terms to Rome via Ravenna. Some bishops who remained at Rome were locally powerful, like Leo. Some were independent, like Vigilius and Martin. But as the impartial (because schismatic) historian Socrates points out, for the most part these bishops were... bishops. Socrates doesn't always even know who these Latin bishops are - because he doesn't care. Tell you whom Socrates does care about: the bishop of Constantinople, in his days Nestorius and then Maximian.

But but but the Greek guy could be deposed well, tell that to Benedict IX or to anybody involved at Constance AD 1415. Nestorius was a heretic! compared to Honorius? really? Following Ephesus I must consider Maximian more the Catholics' temporal father than contemporary Celestine. Although both were stuck in a difficult situation.

Interestingly for those of us in an Erasmian liberal tradition we must consider that William of Ockham could work only in Nicholas' side of Christendom, being an excommunicate in John's. The first Nicholas V was better for the cause of progress, whoever was pulling his string.

Perhaps "Pope" be a title Christians agree to bestow upon the most orthodox Christian bishop. The title might have to be posthumous. I might even grant the title to the Catholicos in Iraq; although Timothy Qadmāyé is perhaps disqualified as contemporaneous with Leo III. CORRECTION 10/9/21: Nah, screw Leo.